IN THE (Internet and Marketing) NEWS
There is not much riveting in the Internet Marketing front in the past little while, but you can certainly sense a storm a brewing on the horizon on at least two fronts: the rumors and posturing of cellular wonders ready to set the stage as worthy competitors to the still hot iPhone introduced last month... (we would like to wish them luck... it’s an aggressive and vicious market to try to get a toe-hold in...) and Facebook seems to be kicking up a bit of a dust storm in it’s attempts to take over the world.
But before we get into those areas, I would like to point out how quiet it has been on the Google home front lately since the China storm seems to have blown over( for the time being at least.) Facebook might want to take a look at what went down ... there’s a few very blunt lessons here to be learned when a singular regime sees fit to stand up and take over the world. In this "ME" generation it appears a singular supremacy that appears to get "puffed" up can find it’s self dropped like a hot potato in a New York minute.
Here is what went down:
-No China did not bend to a large corporation from a Democratic Western Culture attempting to, not only dictate, but seemingly blackmail their views in attempts to gain a global monopoly.
-No China’s internet activities did not grind to a halt when Google pulled out. For them life rocks on and Google can no longer lay claim in its media releases of its intent to be a globular force to reckon with.... in direct relation to this Googles market shares dropped .
-No Google could not prove that China was indeed the country which the scammer’s attacks stemmed from or as China claimed, merely caught in the middle as the sophisticated scam bounced off of their IP signal in attempts to be elusive.
-And here’s the big one... as China dug in standing on their right to run their country their way... no one was willing to stand up and back Google in it’s attempts to force democacy on a socialist country. The US government backed down, the corporate world kept very silent on the situation, the only ones to stand behind Google were "GoDaddy.com". Why the abandonment from such a worthy cause? Perhaps because it was seen by most as a purely business maneuver as opposed to protecting the civil rights of the global computer user. Googles had to admit soon after that their business moves tend to make more enemies than allies, (read more)
On another front... who is going to kick the iPhone off of it’s pedestal? There have been PR pushes already and rumors of companies with their own versions to take on the very lucrative market. Rogers I see plans to introduce a "Social Networking" phone soon, Sprint will launch a new 4G phone on June 4th and Google’s Android takes number 2 spot from the iPhone... although Apple balks at these stats as being irrelevant.
No matter! The important factor we all as marketers need to understand is that 1/4 of every household in North America uses a cell phone solely... no land lines involved. Clearly we are looking on a new frontier of advertising. Pocket billboards begging for more and nouveau applications to intrigue the hungry downloader. Always the challenge facing we the entrepreneurs: new ways of attracting the market with pocket sized interactive ad machines. So whose going to win in the cell race? Well there has been a lot of rumors lately about head crunching and brain collaborating to get that android technology into the hands of almost everyone... and that is by making the technology accessible... price wise that is. My guess is the true winners in the race are you and I...(wink!!!)
Finally and certainly not least. No doubt we will be headlining this story in the blog for a while to come: "Facebook the New World Leader! " You think I jest? Facebook is now the number one social site on the global web and kicking up some serious dust in it’s wake. The meat of the matter is Facebook’s desire to carry more clout in advertising revenues ( read more) so it made a few moves that worried a few people about infringements on privacy including the Senators who tell Facebook to tighten up on their privacy policy (read more).
This was only compounded by a momentary blunder when a bug related to a feature on the fast-growing social network site allowed a user to see how their profile will appear to other users. By manipulating the "preview my profile" feature, Facebook said people were able to view their friends' private chat messages and pending friend requests for a limited amount of time on Wednesday. Facebook worked furiously to correct this problem.
As we have reported earlier this year in our news blog (CHICKMELIONfreelancer) that Facebook is riddled with bugs and viruses. It is a large headache for businesses whose employees use company computers to interact on the site. There have been corporate leaks, systems crashes and spammer attacks involved. A survey cited that 70% of viruses found in corporate and business systems have come from social sites with management claiming that Facebook was the most likely of all to pass off a virus. Ahhh! The pains of being popular. A new form of "socially transmitted diseases" emerges!
It seems not in light of all this there is a bit of an exodus from Facebook. A few reasons cited: the ever growing security concerns is the top reason, in addition to people just plain being bored with the site it’s self. (read more.) It will be interesting to see just how Facebook will address this exodus. In light of a lot of marketing gurus who urge people to stay because of the benefits of the new "like" option, history has proven that if one forges a new path and is successful with it... the herd of competitors will follow.
To all those unimpressed with Facebook and the way it is set up... hold your breath, surely an alternative is already on the drawing board. That’s the way it goes with success isn’t it... someone’s always ready to throw salt on your game. Oh by the way... isn’t the share button a wonderful alternative in showing your support for a business and ideas? After all, when you can buy your "like" supporters (ahem... sorry it is called crowd sourcing instead isn’t it ... forgive me) how important will the numbers be in the mind of the consumer ?
